Stacks and stacks of school buses were parked and going nowhere off Interstate 35E.

People still stuck at home because of icy side streets might want to stop watching for a city crew. It’s probably not coming.

They should watch the thermometer instead. Chances are that only Saturday’s hoped-for thaw will free them from the sofa.

City managers across the region said Thursday that while they routinely clear ice from major roads, they don’t have nearly enough money or gear to tackle every residential street. For many cities, not sanding residential streets is a long-standing policy born of hard economics.

Cash-strapped Dallas, for example, spent roughly $460,000 for three days of sanding major roads this week. Adding all the residential streets would inflate the cost about tenfold, said Gilbert Aguilar, director of Dallas’ streets services.

“It can be done, of course,” he said. “Is it the right thing to do? Probably not.”

Still, it’s been a frustrating week for many in North Texas, and not just because stocks of bread and milk might have run low. The year’s first icefest coincided with Super Bowl week, leading to questions about whether visiting celebrities were getting their paths cleared while home folks were left to spin out.

The Texas Department of Transportation said no. TxDOT said it brought in extra people and equipment in advance of the big game but stuck to its policy of handling the most-traveled highways first and moving down to less-used roads.

Interstate 30, which passes through Arlington just north of Cowboys Stadium, got the same attention as other major freeways, said TxDOT spokeswoman Jodi Hodges.

That doesn’t mean the Super Bowl stars aren’t getting help negotiating the frozen streets. The Omni Mandalay at Las Colinas, where the Green Bay Packers are lodging, has been a priority for city crews, as have businesses with large numbers of employees, Irving public works director Dan Vedral said.

Irving also provides the Packers with police escorts to and from Cowboys Stadium. That was part of the region’s pitch to secure the Super Bowl, City Manager Tommy Gonzalez told City Council members Wednesday.

“Just wanted to make that clear because I know there’s been questions,” he said.

Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said Wednesday that the local icy-roads anxiety left a visitor from the North amused.

“Yesterday [Tuesday], I enjoyed driving on the highway with semi-trucks going 25 miles per hour, which is a new experience for me because living in Wisconsin, they actually know what to put on the roads so you can still drive a decent speed,” he said.

“Down here, I guess they put sand on the roads. They might need to revise that a little bit.”

Yes, Texas has salt

TxDOT did revise that years ago. The state agency uses a mixture of magnesium chloride — a salt — and sand to de-ice highways. Salt, which lowers water’s freezing point so it stays liquid longer, is a standard winter weapon for roads in the North.

For the first time, TxDOT brought snowplows into Dallas-Fort Worth this week. The plows, usually stationed in West Texas, push salt-treated slush to the roadsides. Then they return after another salt-and-sand application.

In the South, with fewer and shorter freezes, the choice for cities is usually sand, which boosts traction but doesn’t melt ice and is cheaper. Some cities use a mixture; Dallas puts down 90 percent sand and 10 percent salt.

Dallas has enough equipment to sand 1,000 lane-miles of major streets and bridges in less than two days, but it has a total of 11,600 lane-miles, counting residential streets, said Aguilar, the city streets director.

Even sand was running low. Duncanville saved its supply for bridges, thoroughfares and emergency routes but could be virtually out by Friday evening, Public Works Director Steve Miller said.

Carrollton residents who called City Hall heard an automated message saying there wasn’t enough sand to help them. The city was all but out by Tuesday and ordered more.

“But the suppliers couldn’t move it either,” said City Manager Leonard Martin.

He said the length of the freeze — it’s lasted since Tuesday — made problems inevitable.

“You can’t staff people for something like this. At least in basically the last 10 years, we’ve not had anything like it,” he said.

“I don’t know of any city in the country that deals effectively with ice storms.”

But in neighboring Farmers Branch, officials claimed just that.

“Our entire city is very passable,” said City Manager Gary Greer. “I’ve heard we’re clearer than anywhere else.”

He said crews had been operating 24 hours a day since the storm’s first drops fell and were sanding particularly icy patches on residential streets as well as thoroughfares.

Breakdowns and blackouts

Not that the effort has been perfect. Pat Edmiston, a resident of the Brookhaven neighborhood in Farmers Branch, said a 50-foot puddle of ice in front of her house had daunted her from trying to leave.

“Well,” Greer acknowledged, “we haven’t removed every piece of ice off every street in town.”

In Cedar Hill, a cascade of mishaps made for frigid proof of Murphy’s Law: If something can go wrong, it will.

One of the city’s two sand trucks broke down soon after the storm. Some icy streets were so steep that the remaining truck couldn’t climb them.

Police checked in regularly on residents stranded atop those hills, Public Works Director Elias Sassoon said.

Rolling power outages on Tuesday left Sassoon coordinating operations with a flashlight. Some of his crews hadn’t slept since the storm.

While major streets and intersections were cleared, Sassoon said he’ll re-evaluate his de-icing procedures.